Cayenne Consulting In the Media
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Tips for Calculating Your Gross Margin If it feels like ages since you took Accounting 101, here's a detailed refresher on how understanding gross margins can help you make the right business decisions. |
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How to Write an Executive Summary When you're trying to sell an idea to a potential investor, you'll need to craft the pitch-perfect executive summary. Here's how to write a summary that will get your business plan read, and your foot in the door. |
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Funding Your Startup: Are You A Zero Or A One? Startup funding is a binary event. When I say that funding is a binary event, I mean that there are only two possible outcomes: either you succeed in getting funding, or you don’t. You win or you lose – there is no second place. All or nothing. |
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Top 10 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make When Writing a Business Plan Writing a business plan is often a crucial first step to getting your start-up off the ground. A good plan can help you raise money, recruit members of your management team, set your marketing strategy and, perhaps best of all, refine your thinking. A plan riddled with errors? That can sink you. Here are 10 mistakes that entrepreneurs frequently make when crafting their business plans. |
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The Startup Entrepreneur's Guide To Risk Management Only 44% of small businesses stick around four years or more. One big reason so many go away: Poor risk management. Risk Management is the art and science of thinking about what could go wrong, and what should be done to mitigate those risks in a cost-effective manner. |
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What Kills Startups? Companies flatline when the cash runs out and total current liabilities (i.e., bills due now) exceed total liquid assets. Risk management is all about identifying and mitigating the uncertainties – especially the company killers – that surround cash flows. And risk management is an essential part of any entrepreneur's business plan. |
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Prepare for Your Company's Future The Upside of a Downturn: "A lot of your less capable competitors are going out of business now, and this is a great chance to establish your brand and build market share," says Akira Hirai, founder and managing director of Cayenne Consulting, LLC, a Phoenix-based consultancy for entrepreneurs focusing on strategy, planning, financial forecasts and budgeting. "If you lay the groundwork now, you'll be on top of your game when the economy recovers." |
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Where to find investors Fewer than one in 10,000 businesses receive initial funding from VCs, according to a report from Babson College and the London Business School. Thus new entrepreneurs can expect to go through several rounds of rejections; even those who meet all the typical venture-capital criteria usually have to pitch for six months to a year before they have money in the bank, says Akira Hirai, managing director of Cayenne Consulting in Phoenix, which helps entrepreneurs develop business plans and financial forecasts. |
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Entrepreneurs see opportunities in housing downturn Business owners, especially those in the state's emerging technology and biosciences sectors, watched as financiers looked past their ideas, throwing dollars at real estate because it provided almost guaranteed returns. "This (housing) downturn...could end up being the catalyst for a renaissance for technology investing in Arizona," said Akira Hirai, managing director of Phoenix-based business consulting firm Cayenne Consulting LLC. |
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Market shifts could spur investment in Ariz. firms While Arizona ranks in the top half of states, the amount of capital pales in comparison to that received in areas such as California's Silicon Valley, Boston, the Research Triangle in North Carolina and Austin, Texas. Ultimately, any discussion about investment activity and a lack thereof comes back to investors' perceived love affair with real estate. |
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Seeking venture capital: When and how it makes sense Akira Hirai, founder of Cayenne Consulting LLC in Phoenix, says while it is a competitive investment climate, good ideas backed by good teams and good business plans are still getting funded. "The capital formation process takes a long time," says Hirai, who offers a wealth of information through articles on his firm's Web site. "Your management team should be prepared to invest about 500 hours in the plan. Then be sure to have a few people review your plan before you send it out -- people who understand your market, sales approach, distribution strategies, the venture capitalist market, etc. |
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10 Web sites every entrepreneur should know This article is no longer available. |
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Why Business Plans Don't Get Funded Your business plan is very often the first impression potential investors get about your venture. But even if you have a great product, team, and customers, it could also be the last impression the investor gets if you make any of these avoidable mistakes. |
